Choice
by Far Away In Wonderland
Summary: "What is free will?" He asked Eve again. "It is choice," she replied. Symeon hadn't understood back then. Even now he wasn't sure if he understood sometimes. The one where Simon is an angel who loved mankind since the beginning of time but the first one to reciprocate that love wouldn't be a human. Based on the TV-Show.
1. Arc I: Choices

**AN:** So, I really wanted to write a Angel!Simon fic and so this was created during work lol no idea when I´ll update as this fic is one my low priority list.

* * *

Symeon was there when God created the first humans. He remembered watching them from afar as they took their first tentatively steps through the Garden Eden, remembered their curiosity as they took everything around them. He remembered his Father´s command to love and cherish the humans as they did Him.

He had questioned why their Father would create such fragile, breakable beings when he could have made them so much more, so much better, but Father had just smiled benignly at him and told him that those imperfections would make the humans his greatest creation.

Symeon couldn´t really understand Father´s reasoning, but Father had said it and so he believed. He believed and so he came back again and again and watched Adam and Eve as they began to explore the Garden and all that it entailed. He wondered how they knew what to do when Father didn't tell them - didn't give them orders – like he did with the Heavenly Host.

"I do because I can," Eve told him one day when he asked, "I do because I want. I do not need orders to live when I have my free will." Symeon wondered what that was – _free will_. It sounded so strange, so foreign and he didn't know what to do with it.

"It is quite easy," Eve explained, "what do you want?"

"I do not want anything," Symeon replied. "I do not need anything. Father has given no orders, so I do nothing."

"But if He has given no orders, then why are you here?" Eve asked him. "If you do not want anything why do you ask your questions." Symeon didn't know. When he was amongst his brethren he noticed that they were at peace with themselves, following the commands of their Father and praising Him and His creation in the Heavenly Choir. But none of them had ever flown down to the Garden and had talked with the humans like he did.

"What is free will?" He asked Eve again.

"It is choice," she replied. Symeon hadn´t understood back then. Even now he wasn't sure if he understood sometimes.

But then Samael deceived them all by turning into a snake and seducing Eve into taking an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, the one and only forbiddance their Father had laid upon the humans. For this deed Father commanded Michael to chase Adam and Eve out of the Garden Eden and God´s first son descended upon them in righteous fury, flaming sword in hand and evicted them from Paradise.

Symeon stood there, on the small cleaning that he asked Eve about free will once and asked himself if it had been worth it for Eve? An suffocating aura of desolation hung about the whole Garden as if even the plants themselves knew of Father´s terrible wrath. The sky – usual alight with either stars or the sun – was black and not a single sound, not a single smell pervaded the air.

 _What is free will?_

Symeon let his fingers roam over the plants around him and thought back on how this place had been when Eve´s laughter had still filled it. How every flower seemed to have bloomed brighter in her presence, how the birds had congregated on the branches of the tree around the clearing and how a small fox kit had once even sat in her lap while they had talked.

 _What is free will?_

The rose had been Eve´s favourite colour. It was as red as her hair – as red as the apple that had condemned her – and its smell lingered on even though it shouldn't. Father had commanded them to forget about Eve and Adam. To cleanse themselves from their memory until their descendants would be worthy of taking up the mantle of humanity.

 _It is choice._

Symeon plucked the rose. He wouldn't forget. He would remember Eve – her fiery red hair that shone so brilliantly in the sun and her green eyes in which there was nothing but kindness and compassion – and one day he would welcome her back in Heaven.

That was his first choice.

* * *

It wasn´t over.

Samael came back and with him came a host of angel that had taken to his cause of the elimination of humanity. With thunder, flames and sulphur they descended upon Heaven and could only be held back at the cost of many angelic lives.

Symeon wept with every of his brothers and sisters that fell to the enemy´s sword. Their pain was his pain and the hollowness that followed their deaths – the black void that settled where their voices should be – was the first time he truly experienced loss. Never had he imagined that angels could do this to each other, never could he had fathomed how hate and rage could have been able to burn into an angel´s grace like this.

His garrison was readying themselves to be employed against Samael´s hordes. They would fight – and die – to defend the sanctuary that was the Garden Eden from being desecrated by the foulness and hate that Samael and his followers brought wherever they went. As Symeon put on his armour on his hand brushed over the rose that he had tucked into his tunic. He thought about Eve and about how she hadn´t deserved this. He thought about her laughter and her kindness and how Samael had twisted for his own agenda.

For the first time in his existence Symeon knew cold, righteous fury that nevertheless burned like fire around his grace.

When he put on his cuirass Eve´s rose was pocketed right over his chest, where his heart would be if he was a human.

To remind him of loss and happiness long gone by.

* * *

And after Samael – now Lucifer – was cast down into Perdition and locked away by Michael who had channelled God´s Holy Wrath, their Father vanished. And instead of turning cold and bitter – blaming mankind and its fault for their Father´s disappearance – Symeon decided to continue to love humanity like their Father had wanted.

This was his second choice.

* * *

Earth was flooded by demons, the infernal hordes having escaped their prison in Hell and were now slowly but surely annihilating humanity. Their cries, their pleas, their prayers could be heard even up in Heaven and yet no angel would descend to Earth and fight the monsters that were about to destroy their Father´s greatest creation.

"We need to do something," Symeon pleaded with Michael, the oldest, the strongest, the first Archangel who commanded the Heavenly Host while their Father was gone.

"There has been no order," was Michael´s reply.

"We need to do something," Symeon pleaded with Raphael, the most compassionate, the most even tempered, the third Archangel who was, above everything else, a healer.

"There has been no order," was Raphael´s reply.

"We need to do something," Symeon pleaded with Gabriel, the youngest, the most passionate, the fourth Archangel who was His messenger and carried His word to the Host.

"There has been no order," was Gabriel´s reply.

And as last resort Symeon went to Raziel, the fifth Archangel, keeper of the Gardens and pleaded with him to end the plight upon humanity.

"There has been no order," Raziel replied and Symeon thought that all hope for humanity – for Eve´s children – was lost when the other angel continued: "But He commanded that we love humanity even more as we do Him, so we shall help mankind against the foes that threaten His creation." As he said this Raziel cut a branch from the Tree of Knowledge and under his hands it turned into a sword more beautiful that any angel blade Symeon had ever laid eyes on. He then grasped the sword and strode to the nearest spring where he took one stone from its shores and cut it in half with one single strike. And under his hands it turned into a cup, delicate and fragile but clearer than the very water of the Garden´s springs.

"Follow me," Raziel commanded and together they flew down to Earth where at the shore of a small lake a man was kneeling and praying fervently.

"Jonathan Shadowhunter," Raziel intoned as he appeared in front of the man. Symeon, meanwhile, chose to stay in the background, just watching. "Your prayers have been heard. No longer shall mankind be defenceless against the infernal hordes that threaten to annihilate it. Rise, Jonathan." With shaking limbs, Jonathan rose and took a few steps towards Raziel.

"This is the Mortal Cup," Raziel spoke, "the life blood of an angel and the lifeblood of you shall give your people the abilities to end the hellish menace wherever it appears." One single red tear fell down Raziel´s cheek and into the cup. Still shaking, Jonathan Shadowhunter took a knife from his belt, cut his thumb and let his blood fall into the cup.

"Drink," Raziel ordered and Jonathan drank. "Let your people drink from this cup and they shall receive the strength to withstand the demons and their ilk." Jonathan took the cup from Raziel´s hands and thanked the Archangel with a stream of barely intelligible words.

"I bequeath you the Sword of Truth, to separate lies from truth," Raziel continued speaking and handed over the sword to Jonathan. "No enemy shall withstand it as long as it is wielded by someone of purest heart and mind." Jonathan thanked him again.

"Should you ever be in need of myself, bring the sword and the cup to this lake to summon me," Raziel explained. "But beware, once used I shall never appear again."

"Go to your people now and tell them that salvation has come," Raziel ordered. Jonathan bowed, turned around and then briskly walked away, not wanting to waste any time to get to his people.

"Our work here is done," Raziel spoke to Symeon. "We shall go back to Heaven and close its gates until the day the Apocalypse is nigh and we are needed again." Symeon knew that he should go, that he should heed the Archangel´s order.

 _What is free will?_

"No," he spoke instead, with an air of finality around him. "Go, but I shall not." Raziel just looked at him, no emotions behind his eyes, and then he vanished.

 _It is choice._

And when the Pearly Gates closed for the last time, Symeon stayed down on Earth.

This was his third choice.


	2. Arc I: Realisation

**Warning:** Aftermath of torture, burning at the stake

* * *

"What is your name?" Symeon asked the girl that was sitting in the grass beside the muddy path he was walking along on his way to Rome. He hadn't watched a papal election since centuries and he very much liked to see the Holy City again. So much history condensed into bricks and stones and people that hadn't changed much since the days of the Emperors.

"Julianne," the girl replied as she looked up to him. "Who are you?"

"A wanderer," Symeon replied.

"Where to?" the girl asked with curiosity.

"Rome," Symeon answered. The girl let out a wistful sigh.

"I want to go there, too," she admitted to him. "I´ve heard they´ve got the best medicos there. I want to learn how to heal people" She smiled at him brightly, but then her smile faltered. "But mama said that they don't take women."

"They don´t," Symeon agreed with her. "But do you know who takes women as apprentice?"

"Who?" Juliane looked up at him, her brown eyes filled with excitement and hope.

"Me," Symeon replied. "If you want I can teach you a little bit and every time I find myself in this beautiful neighbourhood again I shall teach you something new." Symeon nearly toppled over when the girl threw herself at him and hugged him so fiercely that, if he had been human, he probably would have been unable to breath.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Julianne mumbled.

"I didn't think you´d come again," Julianne confessed to him.

* * *

"I promised I would, didn't I?" Symeon replied.

"It´s been two years," Julianne pointed out. "I was bored."

"Then it is time to teach you something new," Symeon told her. "Let´s expand your knowledge on herbs a little bit, shall we?"

* * *

"My parents want me to marry," Julianne told Symeon as they laid side to side in a little clearing in the forest that bordered the fields of the village Julianne lived. It was quiet and peaceful, the birds in the trees around them happily chirping their tunes, the wind wafting through the leaves and the daisies surrounding them blooming as bright white as freshly fallen snow.

"It is never wrong to find love," Symeon replied.

"But it isn't love," Julianne complained. "All the boys here are so dull. They can neither read nor write and they know nothing of what lies behind the borders of the grasslands they let their sheep grass on. They´re as dull as the animals they watch over." She huffed in frustration.

"Just take me with you," she suggested, "I want to see the world. I want to see Rome, Constantinople and Athens. Please."

"It would be wrong of me to just tear you from your life," Symeon told her. "How would your parents feel?"

"They´d be happy to get rid of me," Julianne said.

"I do not believe that," Symeon contradicted her. "Talk to them. And if they are truly willing to let you go, then I will take you with me."

* * *

"Where is Julianne?" Symeon asked an old woman who was trudging along the way to the village he was headed to as well.

"The witch?" the woman spat angrily. "The Inquisitor has put her away, so that she won´t be able to curse us honest townsfolk." She crossed herself. "Tomorrow they´ll burn her and then no further harm shall fall upon us."

* * *

"You cannot save the girl." Symeon turned around to see a woman standing next to the trees that were surrounding the clearing he was kneeling in, her black hair hanging loosely over her shoulder and wearing a white toga that shone too pure of a white. "You cannot."

"She will die if I do not do anything," Symeon replied heatedly.

"She will," the woman confirmed. "Like she would have without your interference."

"Why does a Fate care?" Symeon wanted to know. "What is the fate of one human girl to you, Atropos?" He looked at her – at her unnatural beauty, her unblemished dark skin, her blue eyes behind which no soul shone through, no empathy, no comapssion – and dared her to say something.

"Your rash action will have consequences far beyond your reach," Atropos told him bluntly. "The girl´s death has been set long before she was born to make way for what needs to come."

"So, all this," Symeon made a gesture encompassing all of his surroundings, "just so that she would die? Where is the free will – _the choice_ – in it?"

"She had choices," Atropos replied uncaring, "and they led her to where she is now." She took a few steps towards Symeon until she stood behind him. "As do you now." He could feel Atropos' breath ghosting over his, could feel her body pressed to his on his left side. "You can save her from her fate. But then, a few centuries from now, on a continent yet undiscovered, a child will not be born. And for a want of an unborn child the Mortal Cup will be used to open the gates of Hell and destroy Earth and Heaven both." Now she was nestling against his right side. "Or you could let her die. Her soul would be allowed entrance to Heaven, for it is pure and innocent and you know that. She will die and the woman who accused her and the man who will burn her will fall in love and have four children as cruel and vicious as their parents. They, too, will sire children and so on and so forth. And at the right time at the right place a child will be born and humanity shall continue to prosper." She detached herself from Symeon – the cold and cruel mistress of fate – and strode towards the edge of the clearing. Before she disappeared behind the tree line, she turned around one last time, a cruel smile playing on her lips. "The _choice_ is yours." And then she was gone.

* * *

The cell they had imprisoned Julianne in was cold, dark and wet. Symeon could smell the mould on the walls, the odour of human excrements that clung to everything and the copper smell of blood. There was only a small window through which the faint light of the moon and the stars shone and illuminated the prone figure of Julianne lying on the ground.

Her skin was covered in bruises, cuts and dried blood, her arms and legs broken and her once so shiny hear torn out and scorched. The only thing that was still untouched by the horrors inflicted upon the poor girl where her wide, brown eyes that looked at him filled with terror and pain.

"Symeon," Julianne whispered and hearing the hope and relief tinting her voice send a sharp stab of pain through him.

"Julienne." He said her name but he couldn't bring himself to say more. Instead he kneeled down next to her and carefully pushed aside the hair that was falling into her eyes.

"Save me," Julianne begged through her broken teeth, her voice barely audible over her wheezing. "Please, save me." Tears were flowing down Symeon´s cheeks and where the fell on Juliane´s skin her broken and ruptured skin would knit itself together, as unblemished as it had been once upon a time in a field full of daisies.

"I cannot," Symeon replied through his tears. "I cannot." He was sobbing now as more and more tears fell on Julianne´s mistreated body. He took her hand and grasped it as tight as he could without hurting her. "Your soul will go to Heaven because it is as pure as nothing I have seen before. My brethren will welcome it with open arms and you shall forget all the suffering inflicted upon you on this world. I promise you that. Your life here on Earth was short and painful, but your life in Heaven shall be eternal and blissful." He stood up, let go of her hand and walked towards the door of her cell. Every step he felt his Grace breaking apart bit by bit by bit.

"Wait, wait," Julianne shouted after him. "Symeon, please, don´t go, please, please!" Symeon didn't turn around. He knew what he would see: Julianne´s eyes full of desperate hope and betrayal, her broken and twisted arm outstretched, trying to reach him and stop him from leaving her. He would see the last remnants of a bright and innocent girl clinging to what little was still left of her life. So he kept going.

"Symeon."

"Symeon!"

" _Symeon!"_

" _ **Symeon!"**_

* * *

Symeon watched as the men dragged Julianne towards the stake they had erected in the middle of the village. He watched as the villagers hollered and cheered as one of their own was bound to the pole in the middle of the pieces of wood they had piled together. He watched as they kindled the flames. He watched as the flames began to lick at Juliane´s bare skin and she began to scream. He watched as her gaze found his and for a short moment the hate that flashed behind her eyes eclipsed the brightness of the red and yellow flames around her. He watched as the flames finally obscured Julianne from his view until only her screams – so full of pain and fear and agony and terror – could be heard.

He watched as the lips of the women that had accused Julianne of all this curled into a satisfied smirk and for the first time in his existence Symeon knew hate so fierce and dark that he could have laid waste to whole continents and not cared.

And as the flames soared higher and higher and the crackling of the wood drowned Julianne´s screams of agony Symeon realized that humans were bigoted, hateful and cruel and that the kindness and compassion Eve had possessed had long ago left her descendants.

Atropos cut the golden thread and for a short moment regret filled the immortal being´s heart as she watched the filament falling into the void around her.


	3. Arc II: Descend

**AN:** The chapters in this story may seem as if they lack continuity, but that is only because I have a whole head canon in my mind of which I only write down the scenes that capture my interest. After all, this story is only a writing exercise for me which I chose to share here on a whim. Nevertheless, I´m overjoyed that so many people seem to like it.

* * *

Symeon continued to watch over the descendants of Jonathan Shadowhunter. Raziel may have given the man the means to defeat the demon incursion but yet Symeon felt somehow still connected – responsible – for the fate of the people who dedicated their whole life to the defence of humanity, even if mankind left much to be desired.

They were full of idealism and hope when they started their society. They set down rules and laws to protect their wards and they swore to always uphold them. Symeon supposed it was nice, to know that not everything was corrupt and tainted. That there was still some light – some good – from the times of Creation.

But like everything good, this as well should not last long. The original Shadowhunters, well aware of their role as protectors and servants to humanity, died and left their responsibilities to those who had never lived through the suffering of the Demon Wars, who had never been humbled by defeat and the bone-shaking fear of looking your own eradication straight in the eyes. As their bones were laid to rest and their likeliness carved into grand monuments they would have despised, so were their ideals laid to rest as well.

Arrogance, hubris and vanity crept into the very society that had sworn to never fall prey to the trappings of the powerful. The monuments became grander still, the rules more elaborate and aloof and the original Shadowhunter lines shut themselves away more and more, believing in their own superiority and their legitimation through Raziel himself. They no longer saw themselves as serving humanity, but as someone who should be well paid and respected for deigning themselves to fulfil their original task.

Idris once meant to be a refugium for those that dedicated their life to the fight against evil became the very testament of the squalidness of a whole society. A peaceful place slowly being turned into one of squabbling, backstabbing and political manoeuvring.

It truly was a sad sight to behold, Symeon thought as he stood atop one of the hills surrounding the city. A beautiful façade hiding the ugliness behind. With a dejected sigh, Symeon took flight until his feet touched the shore of the lake where Raziel had bestowed the Mortal Instruments upon the first Shadowhunter.

There was no noise but the wind that wafted trough the trees, making their leaves dance to its tune. There was only silence and tranquillity to be found in this place and maybe that was exactly what Symeon needed right now.

One step after another he slowly walked forwards, the water flowing around his feet, encompassing them. It was cold and clear, not a single speck of dirt tainting its purity and Symeon could feel his very spirit rejuvenating with each step that took him further from the lake´s shores.

"We have awaited you." Symeon spun around to where the voices where coming from and saw two women standing on the shore of the lake. One was small, her body so lithe that one would fear that a single blow of the wind would knock her over. Her black hair framed her face like the finest of silk, contrasting her pale white skin. She took the appearance of a woman from the continent that the humans called Asia, but neither Symeon nor either of the two women had any use in these names and categories. The other woman looked at him with a frown, her blue eyes measuring him carefully while her curly blonde hair danced in the wind.

"There is one missing," Symeon remarked.

"Atropos does not care for the living," the black-haired replied. "Hers is the task of cutting the thread and it makes no difference what happenstances occurred before. One does not escape her and secure in that knowledge she has long since retreated from the world of the living."

"Then why are you here, Clotho?" Symeon wanted to know. "What does the Fate that spins the golden thread do here down on Earth?" He then turned to the other woman. "And you, Lachesis, what is your purpose in coming here? You, the allotter, who weaves the life of everyone from its beginning until the very end?"

"We have come to offer choices," Lachesis said. "Choices of life and choices of death. Choices of paradise and choices of damnation." Symeon let out a harsh laugh.

"Why have you come to me then?" He demanded to know. "It is humanity that Father has bestowed upon the gift of free will – of choices. I am an angel. It goes against our very purpose to chose."

"And yet here you stand," Clothoe replied, "of your own free choosing, of your own free will. You have overcome the shackles the Creator has imposed upon his firstborns and as such we have sought you out."

"What do you offer then?" The angel asked. "Speak." Lachesis lips curled into a smile.

"Such impatience from someone with so much time at his disposal," she chided him. "But we shall take no offense."

"This," Clotho began to speak and held up a golden thread barely longer than Symeon´s smallest finger. "is the thread of a human boy that would have grown up to make a difference in the fight between the forces of evil and good." She sighed. "But your presence on this plane of existence has disrupted a delicate plan in the making since the creation of existence itself and now Lachesis shall hand the boy´s thread to Atropos on the morrow. He will die in his mother´s womb, never to know what life would have offered him."

"Are you only here to tell me of things that I prevented from happening, instilling regret and grief?" Symeon interrupted her.

"No," Lachesis replied, "as we told you, we came to offer choice. Without the boy, evil will rise again and while there are futures – possibilities – where humanity shall prevail, they are scarce and few." She looked at him with her fathomless eyes and Symeon continued to listen. "We offer you to take his place, to make the difference for the creation of your Father that you treasure so dearly."

"Choices of life and choices of death. Choices of paradise and choices of damnation," Clotho repeated Lachesis' opening words.

"What choice is there?" Symeon asked. "To condemn everything or to save it?"

"It is a choice," Lachesis contradicted him.

"We never claimed it to be a good one," Clotho added. "So, how decide you, Symeon, Angel of the Lord?"

"You already know," Symeon replied barely above a whisper. "You knew from the start." Clotho and Lachesis just smiled serenely at him.

The last thing Symeon remembered was falling.

Simon Lewis opened his eyes to white clothed women in white staring down on him – to their bloodstained hands and a man starring down on him in wonder and awe – and started to scream.


End file.
